Chapter 1

Samantha

 

 

“Are you sure Dr. Carpenter can’t at least take a message?” I plead with the receptionist on the other end of the line. “I know he says that the Verapamil takes some time to take effect, but it’s been a week and a half, and I can barely make it to classes.”

 

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist says in a bland tone that tells me she couldn’t care less. “But his voicemail box is full. He should be back from lunch at 3 PM. If you can catch him before we close, he should be able to advise you.”

 

“So ...when do you close?” I’m trying not to get upset. The pounding in my chest will only get worse if I do.

 

I try to distract myself by glancing around at the little stand of trees that surrounds me as I sit on a bench at the edge of campus. I started getting dizzy and sick again just walking up a slight incline for a quarter mile, and it scared me.

 

“We close at 4 PM.” She sounds disgusted—whether with me, her boss, or her job, I’m not sure.

 

“Thank you.” I wish that I could reach through the phone and strangle her. Instead, I take a deep, slow breath and struggle to keep my cool as I hang up.

 

I have to sit there a while as the stress sends a fresh wave of dizziness through me. I’m barely holding back my panic, which I know will only add to the problem. Even then, a few tears roll down my cheeks.

 

The pills aren’t doing anything. I need real help and expertise. Not that cheap doctor who just throws drugs at everything!

 

The problem started six months ago: bouts of painfully fast and sometimes irregular heartbeats, with dizziness, weakness, and exhaustion. Dr. Campbell keeps trying different pills on me. But even high doses of beta blockers barely put a dent in my symptoms.

 

My scholarship includes student medical coverage. Unfortunately, it's low-bidder garbage, and Campbell is the only cardiologist in town who takes it. He and his receptionist team have a habit of treating me like dirt when I can least handle it.

 

Just calm down, Sam. It will get worse if you don’t.

 

This is getting humiliating. In my freshman year I was zipping around campus on my bike like it was nothing. Now and again I would feel a little dizzy, but I was used to that. I've dealt with it my whole life.

 

Then the attacks started happening. The first time, I was just coming down for breakfast in the dorm cafeteria, ready to face my very last day of finals in my freshman year. I remember walking downstairs to the dorm lobby and stopping short, growing suddenly dizzy as my heart pounded violently.

 

It's gotten worse since then. Now I shuffle around like an old woman and spend too much of the money I earn at my part-time job on cab fare to get home. I even had to quit my weekly swims.

 

I can’t even soak in the hot tub anymore—and that used to be my number one way to relax. But, now, the hot water will make me even dizzier, as it drives up my already overactive heart rate.

 

Dr. Campbell claimed recently that I’m not getting better because I’m not taking my meds. I had to get a test to prove to him that my bloodstream is full of the damn drugs; they just aren’t doing shit. His response was to try a different set of drugs, which, again, do very little.

 

I get up and lift my art bag, an old, gray, canvas messenger bag covered in spatters of oil paint, smears of pastel and chalk, and smudges of charcoal. I’ve had it since I was twelve—one of the few gifts I ever got growing up in the foster system. Right now, it feels like it’s filled with bricks.

 

My final class of the day is at six—a night studio where all I have to do is stand there, paint, and try not to fall over. I don’t even have to wrestle any of the big canvases today—it’s all five-minute speed sessions on paper. I’ll grab a light meal, drink something without any caffeine in it, go up the hill, and throw on my smock.

 

I’m feeling better after a meal and some fluids. I keep trying the doctor until four, but he makes no effort to return my call. “He has other patients,” the receptionist says without apology, while my heart beats so fast and hard it nauseates me.

 

I wonder if this callous bitch of a receptionist has ever gotten really sick in her life. If things keep getting worse, I’m going to end up in the emergency room again. I already have a huge bill from last month that I can't pay, and the prospect of facing yet another one makes my heart beat even faster.

 

I agonize over that possibility while I sit on that bench and call Campbell twice more before his office closes. Tears start running down my cheeks after I hang up the second time, and I wipe them away sternly. Enough of that.

 

I didn’t get this far by giving up or feeling sorry for myself. I’ll find some way to survive this, just like I survived foster care, public school, and getting my ass into college on a full ride. But as I get up and start walking at a painful snail’s pace toward the student center, I’m scared to death.

 

I spend a lot of my time on campus alone. I’m kind of used to it. In school, I was the kid with no parents, who went home to an institutional cot and food that was marginally worse than the stuff in the dorm cafeterias.

 

Making friends is a new skill for me. Here, at least, classes are so huge that nobody notices that I’m recycling through the same half-dozen outfits every week. But it doesn’t make approaching people any easier.

 

Still, when I get back that evening, completely drained and with paint smudges on my hands, I exchange greetings with a few people on my way up to my dorm room. The guard station and a lot of the dorm doors are decorated for Christmas—mostly cheap, printed, paper decorations, tinsel garlands, and sometimes a string of colored or silver LED lights. The bulletin board on my floor is full of seasonal party announcements.

 

I try to ignore them and just make it to my door. The sight of them tends to leave me depressed.

 

I was lucky enough to have been assigned one of the rare single rooms. The room is tiny and plain, but it’s the first private room I have ever had in my life, so I refuse to complain.

 

It’s not even eight, and I know that if I sleep now, chances are I’ll end up getting up at some weird hour. But I can barely keep my eyes open, so I don’t really care. It's bedtime.

 

I leave my bag and clothes in a pile, pull on a huge, purple t-shirt and shorts, and crawl under the covers, barely remembering to set my phone on the bedside table. If I sleep long enough, the pain in my chest may actually go away for a while.

 

I wake up hours later to total darkness. I feel like a huge weight has dropped onto my chest. My heart is galloping like I'm running a race, making me dizzy and sick. I gasp and try to sit up, but it hurts too much. Oh my God, am I dying?

 

I flail for my phone and almost knock it off the small table before managing to grab it. Every single heartbeat pounds in my head, my chest burns and aches, and the sides of my neck hurt, like my veins are going to burst.

 

I manage to dial for help, but everything after that gets vaguer and vaguer. I give my name, location, and information about my heart condition, but it sounds like my voice is coming from far off, as if someone else is in control of it. It feels like I’m drifting further and further from my dorm room, out over a black sea, where the pounding of my heart is all I can hear.

 

I hang on through sheer force of will as the 911 dispatcher keeps me on the phone and tries to help me stay conscious. The whine of sirens echoes toward me from afar. Then, the darkness closes over my head, and I hear rather than see my phone drop to the floor.